The Acceptance

Chapter 2: Until there was you!

What my parents envision for me has never been what I wanted.

For as long as I can remember I haven't wanted children. I'm just not maternal enough. Don't get me wrong. I love babies and can look after children like a well-trained nanny, but I just don't want my own. Everyone who knows me from a bar of soap knows this about me, even if most of them delude themselves into believing that I will change my mind with time and the right someone.

What they don't know is that I also don't want the husband.

When I was in my early teens I remember 'admiring' the characters/actors that I saw in my favourite shows on television and noting that the vast majority were indeed female. I didn't know what it meant for I was as cloistered as a nun in an abbey, and attributed it to the strong sense of feminism I held as a young girl raised amongst boys. I convinced myself that it was because they were all strong, successful (and definitely attractive) young females that I aspired to be like, but I still felt that it was different, so I made a conscious effort to notice conventionally attractive males and began to plaster their pictures around my room. I did anything to make the lie more convincing and distract from my little revelation... I didn't want to be like these women I wanted to be with them. Ironically, my parents thought that balance of males to females adorning my walls was a good thing because I wasn't 'boy crazy'. I don't think they suspected that I was internally struggling with it all. Even back then I hid it because on some level I knew my parents would not help me understand it, and they definitely wouldn't accept it. I mean my mother's idea of the sex talk was and I quote "Not until you're married". How would this woman possible be ok with me being different? So I ignored my feelings and hid. Something I have become rather adept at doing over the years.

As I got older and discovered more about the world and sexuality in general, the confusion I felt as a fifteen-year old re-emerged and with it came to an extent self-loathing. I hated what I was, not because I thought that it was wrong but because it made me different. I was already different. It wasn't fair that I cop this as well. I already didn't feel like I fit in at school, now I didn't fit in at home either. I knew I could never tell my parents. My dad was such a homophobia he refused to watch 'Will and Grace' for god's sake. How was he going to deal with his daughter bringing a girl home? My brothers weren't any better; they were my father's sons after all.

Eventually I became content to live the role I had created for myself. I played the part of the obedient, straight daughter for such a very long time. When people questioned why I never dated I fed them the overused lies proclaiming my need for independence and that I wasn't ready to settle down, that I wanted to focus on my career. The character I had been playing for so long had them fooled, but beneath the mask I felt that I was being eaten away. I felt that with every day that I continued to wear the costume the more of my true self I was losing. Beneath it all I yearned to connect with someone, to be unconditionally loved and to love them in return. I just didn't know how. After being removed from the world and hiding my emotions behind the strongest of fortifications for so long, I had forgotten how to open myself. I was emotionally much like a castle with no gate; I didn't know how to let people in. I hid for a reason and it scared me to think how people would react to the person behind the facade.

That is, until there was you.

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Trashy romance novels like to depict the introduction of the love interest like a bolt of lightning in a raging storm, sudden and creating upheaval and destruction in every aspect of the hero/heroines life. It wasn't like this with you. You had been there, quietly apart from my life, not really drawing attention to yourself but playing the quiet bystander. The quietly important character that would be revealed as the real hero in the end... you were, for lack of a better description Clark Kent. Not that I was Lois Lane, far from it, but you get my drift.

We started off as passing acquaintances, nodding and smiling to each other as we passed each other in the halls. I didn't even know your name, just that you worked on the first floor and that you had a nice smile. Then one unassuming afternoon, while I was waiting for the elevator with one of my friends, you appeared from nowhere and struck up a conversation.

Not with me, because being my socially retarded self I was shocked that someone I didn't know wanted to talk to me, and so I bore a hole into the elevator doors with my gaze. Luckily, I was saved from the awkward situation that threatened to occur by my friend who is a bubbly and openly social sort and still amazes me to this day with her ability to put up with my crap. As the conversation continued I braved a look in your direction and was met with a smile and I smiled timidly in return.

That day I learned a lot about you. You were an intern having recently graduated from university and having decided to play it safe you were 'getting a feel for each department before committing yourself' as you put it. I remember thinking to myself that you seemed much brighter than the other interns I'd had the opportunity to meet and I later heard a few of my colleagues mention that you had graduated from the same university as I (and the majority of my department) had, and the thought made me smile. For our alumni were severely loyal and at times, I won't deny, elitist; and I was one of them.

The knowledge that you were one of 'us' filled me with a strange sense of pride that I couldn't explain. I didn't know your name, and yet I was proud of you. Soon I found myself comfortably chatting to you whenever fate would cross our paths. Your warm personality soon had me captivated and I quickly found myself feeling the sting of disappointment whenever we would part. I began to hate the elevators ding, for that meant our brief but pleasant moment was over and I would have to return to my office which always felt dull after I had been with you. I knew I was being completely irrational but I couldn't help it; I was hooked.

The affection I now felt for you put me in a spin. I had never had a crush and I didn't know what to do. I couldn't exactly ask anyone because no one, not even my closest and dearest friends knew that I was gay. So I suffered in silence, our brief meetings in the elevator and around the office sustained me like a puppy being fed a table scrap.

That is, until the day that you changed everything.